


Fade-Touched Hearts

by alamorn



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 19:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11562108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/pseuds/alamorn
Summary: The dreams start the night after the Inquisitor leaves Hawke in the Fade. They don't stop.





	Fade-Touched Hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meggannn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meggannn/gifts).



The night after Adamant, Varric takes his boots off and finds Fade-stuff. He’s so numb, so hollowed out with grief that he can’t do anything but stare for a long moment. It’s green, glowing faintly, grainy. He pulls off his glove and prods it. Viscous and dry, it curls around his knuckle.

Horror cuts through him, a shock of emotion after the fugue that carried him from Adamant. He slaps the Fade-stuff from his hand, dumps it out of his boots, and retreats to his bedroll, heart pounding.

He thinks of Hawke, of leaping from the rift without checking behind him. He thinks of the way Cadash’s brow creased when he asked, “Where’s Hawke?” Traitorously, he thinks of how to describe the way he felt. A hole opened in his heart. The ground moved beneath his feet. A series of cliches — nothing to do with Hawke.

Grief makes his fingers tingle, like the blood is turning back in his veins, saving itself for his heart. Grief feels like coming down from Hightown late at night, drunk, leaning against the wall and missing steps, a lurch, a shock, a betrayal he can’t wrap his mind around.

“Stop,” he tells himself, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes until he see stars. “Stop.”

He drifts into an uneasy sleep and the world turns green.

Varric’s room at the Hanged Man is pleasantly divorced from time. He does his best to keep it that way — replaces things when they wear, keeps the decorations consistent. It’s a point of stillness in the madness of Kirkwall.

When Varric settles in his chair he pulls a new sheaf of papers towards him, snags the inkwell and pen. There’s something he has to write, though he can’t remember what it is. He licks the pen nib while he thinks.

 _Plink_. He hesitates, staring at the paper. It’s full, though he doesn’t recall writing a word. _Plink_. There’s no table beneath the paper. _Plink_. He frowns, turns.

Hawke is on his bed, face drawn and tired, hair a mess, elbows on knees, daggers dangling from her hands, dripping green ichor. There’s a puddle beneath her that his eyes won’t focus on.

“Hawke?” he says. “You look terrible. Did you challenge Isabella to shots again? You should know better by now.”

She blinks and looks up, frowns when she focuses on him. “Varric? How…Oh. Another spirit. Begone.” She waves a hand at him. “Shoo. Get ye gone.”

“That’s no way to greet a friend,” he says, getting up and walking over to her. She’s making a mess of his sheets. “And when you’re taking advantage of my hospitality, too. See if I let you sleep here now.”

She laughs bitterly. “Well, this _is_ the most comfortable corner of the Fade. Allow me to apologize,” she says and flings a dagger at his face.

Varric retches himself awake, throat burning. “Maker, Hawke,” he rasps, struggling up.

The Fade-stuff is glowing green, spread across his pillow and he curses. His hands are shaking too hard to clear it away with any ease, so he lurches out of the bedroll and out of his tent to sit next to the fire. No green here.

 

When the sun sends the first fingers of light over the horizon, he stands and stretches, taking the time to work the tension from his shoulders and neck. Then he smoothes his hair back and rinses out his mouth. If he looks half mad with grief, Cadash will look very sorry, very sad, and tell him he imagined it.

As it is, he says, “Knock knock,” and walks into her tent without waiting for a response. “We have to go back,” he tells her, and she rubs her eyes, groaning.

“What? Can you…start that over?” She yawns, scratches the back of her neck.

“Hawke’s alive, we need to go back and get her out.”

“Oh, Varric.” Her face goes soft and conciliatory and he knows what she’ll say. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, but Hawke is gone. We can’t get her back.”

“I dreamed of her,” he says. “My first ever dream and it was of her. Do you understand? She’s alive.”

Cadash’s jaw drops, but only for a moment. “You can’t be right. How could you have?” There’s fear in her eyes, more than he expected from someone who’s twice walked physically in the Fade, but she’s still a dwarf after all.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know how I dreamed, I don’t know how she lived, but I did and she did and we have to go back.”

“Varric,” she says again. “No. I’m sorry.”

He clenches his jaw. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll go by myself.”

“What — Varric, no —“

He grabs his pack and starts to walk. Cadash follows him, hopping on one foot as she tries to shove boots on. “Varric, Varric, come back —“

He tunes her out with the help of long practice. Before he’s gone a mile, she’s given up, huffing and sighing and carrying on, but at least she doesn’t send Cassandra after him to throw him over her shoulder and carry him back.

Adamant looms on the horizon, so huge and heavy against the barren land that it’s impossible to judge distance by. Dust fills his boots. How would he describe Adamant?

 _A monster of a place, bloated with the lives it has taken_. No, too dramatic. _Ugly from the foundation to the cornices_. Too personal. _A heavy place, sinking through the sands and spreading it’s weight to the spirits of anyone unfortunate enough to lay eyes on it._

Walking through the gates only makes his thoughts darker. Corpses still litter the ground at Adamant. Cullen’s people have been hard at work clearing them, but there were many to start with and anything touched by red lyrium has to be handled with care. The thick lead lined gloves and tunics aren’t guaranteed protection, but there’s something about the oily sheen of red lyrium that begs for distance.

He wanders for a while, doing his best to chat with Inquisition soldiers as he checks out the ground where the first rift swallowed them up and the second spat them out.

No one questions his presence to his face. He’s not the only person who lost a friend at Adamant. He might be the only one whose friend can come _back_.

So, as soon as he thinks he can get away with it, he lies down and closes his eyes.

He can’t sleep.

It’s not a surprise, really. Fear and hope and anticipation are roiling in his stomach. How could he sleep? He keeps his eyes closed, trying to get comfortable, to force himself to sleep, for as long as he can stand, and then he gets up to help clear the area.

He tries to be charming, and make jokes, and fails, but no one is at their best. They don’t hold it against him.

When the sun finally goes down, he collapses into a dreamless sleep.

He wakes groggy and confused — she should have been there, he should have seen her, _was_ it all a hallucination?

He spends another day helping and another night hoping and takes the long way back to Skyhold.

Kindly, Cadash lets him slink in without comment.

She comes to him later, and doesn’t say anything about his time away, just offers another apology and a hug when his voice breaks.

He sits down with a bottle of brandy, a pen, a stack of paper. He starts to write. Bethany first. The last Hawke, flying free as can be with her apprentices and companions from the Gallows.

 

 _Sunshine_ , he writes _, I’m sorry to always be the bearer of bad news. Marian is gone._

He considers for a moment, pen held carefully to the side. There’s a lot he wants to say, but what he wants to say is less important than what Bethany will need to hear. Read. Whatever. He takes a sip of the brandy and continues.

_She was a hero to the last. We both know that she didn’t need to be, but she was. I’m sorry. Stay safe. I’ll be with you as soon as I can._

He sets it aside for the moment — it’s lacking, but there’s nothing he can write that will make this easier news to get.

 _Isabela_ , he puts down next. She’ll spread the news. He holds his pen on the comma so long it blots intolerably and he has to crumple up the paper and throw it away.

He drains his glass of brandy, then a second, and a third, before he starts again. When he looks up, Cole is sitting near him. He’s too sad and drunk to jump, so he just says, “Kid. Mind the ink.”

He’s expecting…something. Something that hurts but will bleed the rot from the wound, help him heal, later. Instead, Cole says, “You didn’t imagine it.”

Varric’s head snaps up. Cole’s eyes are hidden by his hat, and he’s turned away for good measure. His hands are twisting anxiously, grasping and twisting at the air as if he’s trying to shape it. Remembering the Fade?

“What did you say?” Varric asks, voice hoarse.

“Wrong, all wrong. Trapped in the Fade, touching the Fade, touching _you_. How long have you loved her?”

Varric’s hand tightens on his glass until his knuckles hurt. “Cole,” he says, as gently as he can. “If you’re not going to write these letters for me, I’m going to need you to leave.”

When he blinks, Cole is gone and the letters remain unwritten. “Figures,” he says, and pours another glass, and struggles through another few lines.

When he lies down to sleep he hopes for a dream that will render his letter irrelevant, keep him from having to finish them. But Varric hasn’t been lucky for a long time now.

 

After a month of mourning and drinking and uneasy sleep, Cadash pulls him out to some sand pit in the middle of nowhere, Orlais, along with Solas and Cassandra.

“I can’t believe it’s taken so long to get out here,” she says, cracking her back, as they stare at a waterfall. “Those shards have been driving me _crazy_.”

 

As far as days go, it’s about as terrible as he expects from trips with the Inquisitor. There’s a lot of standing in water, staring up at the temple entrance with hands on hips, lots of getting lost in the canyons, terrifying scrambles up rock faces, more fighting than seems fair. He’s missed some interpersonal development in the month of his mourning, because there’s a lot of snippiness he doesn’t have context for.

He keeps his head down and they leave him out of it. Unfortunately, he still collects a gallon of sand in each boot and a truly humiliating sunburn that goes to his navel.

 

A headache’s been building all day and by the time they get back to camp, Varric is ready to sleep for a week. The shards make his teeth hurt, and fighting dead things never gets less disgusting.

He settles down next to Solas with a grunt and falls asleep almost immediately.

He opens his eyes to green light, the slick black stone of Kirkwall, and Hawke, laid out like a dead thing on the stairs in front of him.

“No, no, no,” he says, hurrying to her side. “Hawke, wake up.”

She’s real. She has to be, otherwise this would be too cruel.

When he puts his hand on her shoulder to shake her awake, he passes right through her. She jerks to wakefulness anyway, rolling to her feet and drawing her daggers in one smooth motion.

“Hawke,” he says, relief knocking him to his ass. “You’re alive.”

She blinks at him and slides her knives back into their sheaths. “For a given value, anyway,” she says, not moving any closer. “This isn’t how you normally act.”

“Normally? Hawke, this is only the second time I’ve been here.”

She shoves her hair back from her face, a motion he first saw over cards when she needed to buy herself time to think. “Lying doesn’t become you, spirit. Although you wear his face better than most.”

“I’m not a spirit, Hawke.”

“Oh, sing a different song,” she snaps. “This one’s boring.”

“Fine,” he says, and sits, staring at her, trying to drink her in. “What song do you want? Metaphorically, mind, I’m still not singing with less than four beers in me.”

She cracks a reluctant grin and sits not far from him. Her hands dangle near her boots, where he knows she keeps some knives. Despite that, her posture is almost loose, almost easy. “Entertain me,” she says. “I’m hideously bored, running for my life all the time.”

“Well,” he says, thinks for a moment. “No shit, there I was, naked, sand in every crack and crevice of me…”

He tells her about Sera stuffing Solas’ bedroll with scorpions in the Hissing Wastes, about the scorpions migrating to _his_ bedroll, about running across the sand naked and terrified and with a scorpion pinching his ass. He tells her about Vivienne putting Bull on his knees with a few sharp words, and then placing a flower crown around his horns. He tells her all the stories he wished he had time to share, before.

And then, when she’s laughing and her hands are flat on the slick black stone, he says, “Now tell me, how did you get away from the Nightmare? I need a dramatic fight scene to keep the middle of _Tale Two: Champion Harder_ fast paced.”

“Only the middle?” she says, a hint of a smile creeping onto her mouth. “I’d think that physically walking the Fade and bravely sacrificing myself to save the rest of you and all of Thedas, eventually, would be a cliffhanger ending.”

“Cliffhangers are a copout,” he tells her. “If my writing’s not good enough that people want more, a cheap narrative trick isn’t going to bring them back.”

“Liar,” she says fondly. “Every single chapter of _Hard in Hightown_ ends with a cliffhanger.”

“That’s different,” he protests. It isn’t, but he’s always been willing to spin tall tales to keep her laughing. “ _Hard in Hightown_ is a serial. Totally different format, totally different needs. A biography — that needs closure.”

Her face shutters. “Well, the Fade certainly closed on me. He swallowed me, by the way. And I cut my way out.” She makes a noise that he generously decides to call a laugh. “Still pulling guts out of my hair.”

“It’s a good look,” he tells her, sitting beside her. “Very Fereldan chic. My tastes have gotten worse since I joined the Inquisition, if you couldn’t tell.”

“You mean I’m not your favorite anymore? I’m wounded.” She feigns a swoon.

“You’ll always be first in my heart, Hawke, don’t you worry.”

“Oh, Varric,” she says, soft and sad. “I wish you were real.”

He tries to grab her hand to prove just how real he is, but he passes right through her. She shivers and closes her eyes, sways towards him and back. “I’m so hungry,” she tells him. Or maybe the air, whatever spirits might be listening. “I hate being hungry.”

He can’t think of anything to say — there’s nothing he can offer her, no way he can make this better. Her words hang as heavy as the Black City above them. “Do you want me to remind you about the Hanged Man’s food? I find that always kills my appetite,” falls out of his mouth, for lack of anything halfway intelligent to say.

She barks a short, sharp laugh. “You’re a pretty solid effort, I’ll give you that. Most of you spirits have no sense of humor _what_ soever.”

“I’m not a spirit,” he says again. “Tell me how to get you out and I will.”

The small happiness drains from her face, and suddenly there’s a knife in her hand. “There’s no call to be cruel. I take back my compliment, you don’t have a sense of humor either.”

“No, Hawke, listen — I don’t know how —“

He wakes up, grabs his throat to make sure it’s not slit.

He thumps Solas awake.

“What is it?” Solas says, yawning and scrubbing at his face.

“You’re the dream expert, right? What could make a dwarf dream?”

Suddenly, Solas is alert. “You’re dreaming? That shouldn’t be possible. How long has this been going on?”

“Since Adamant — this is the second time. It’s Hawke, I see Hawke.”

“Since Adamant — since you were in the Fade? Yes, I can see how that would break the rules. But still, a child of stone, dreaming? The Veil must be thinner than I thought. Where were you, when you first dreamed?”

“Near Adamant. But I went back the next day and didn’t dream.”

Solas draws his legs beneath him and taps his curled fingers against his lips, such the image of a pensive mage that Varric feels almost thrown off. “Then thinness of the Veil is only one part of it. Perhaps proximity to Hawke’s physical location in the Fade also affects your ability to dream?”

“Are you asking _me_?” Varric asks, eyebrows skyrocketing.

“Ah, my apologies,” Solas says, not looking very apologetic. “Merely thinking aloud. I could ask some of my friends to seek her out and keep an eye on her? If you dream again, they will be able to tell us her location.”

“Please,” says Varric, unutterably grateful to be heard.

 

Varric does not dream again, and in the morning, they approach Cadash. Faced with the two of them, and Solas’ expertise, they wander away from camp and she rips a rift open.

Demons pour out, but nothing else.

 

Frostback Basin is beautiful, and the trail of Ameridan is the type of story that would normally have Varric salivating, but he sees the shaman call spirits forth and all he can think of is Hawke.

There’s no time to talk to the Augur, with Cadash pulling them this way and that, but if spirits are passing back and forth with ease the Fade must be thin. He’ll dream of her, he hopes.

Anticipation buzzes so high through him that it takes hours to fall asleep. When he does, he opens his eyes to see Hawke, wild-eyed, and raw. She looks like an open wound, like a starving dog, like a brittle blade that needs only a bit of pressure in just the wrong place and she’ll shatter.

“You,” she says. “I told you to leave me alone.”

“You told me my sense of humor sucked, which was wildly unfair of you, since I wasn’t joking.”

She hesitates, knuckles white around her knife. “Varric?” she asks in a little girl voice. “Not — not that I believe you, of course,” she recovers, in a smoother tone. “But you are consistent.”

“Are you going to put that away?” he asks, nodding at her blade.

“Mm, no,” she says. “They’re waiting, just past the curve. Easier to keep it out.”

“They?”

“The spirits. They’ve been following me for a while now.” She shoots him a sharp look. “They got bolder after I last saw you. Was that your doing?”

He swallows. “Yes,” he admits. “I asked a friend to keep an eye on you. Solas. He was with us, when —“

“When you left me here?” She sighs and slides the blade back into its sheath. “You tell quite a story, spirit.”

“It’s my job. They’re better when you star.”

She cracks a grin. Her body language is still coiled tight, but she lets her shoulders slump in exhaustion. How do you rest, in the Fade, he wonders. How do you rest, when there is no one to watch your back, no safe place?

“Take a nap,” he says. “I’ll wake you if anything comes near.”

She glares suspiciously at him. He’s not sure if she believes him, or is so tired she’ll take anything that’s offered, but after a long moment she shrugs and lays down. Instantly, she’s out.

He sits next to her. If he could, he would touch her — hold her hand, play with her hair, something, anything to make sure she’s real, she’s alive, she’s with him. As it is, he watches her breathe, examines the bags under her eyes. It’s been two months. Has she slept? What has she eaten? What has she _drunk_?

Her eyes shift rapidly under her lids and he traces the air above her cheekbones. She’s sallow and bloodless, and he can see the weight of every minute written on her face.

His heart aches. If he were cleverer he could have gotten her out of here by now. But he hasn’t. And all he can do is sit with her.

The silence is oppressive, so he starts to talk, quietly enough that she doesn’t wake. It’s nonsense, story ideas he’s been turning around, frustrations he’s had. When he can feel himself growing tired, a strange feeling when he knows he’s asleep, he says, “I miss you,” because he can’t bear not to.

Then he puts his hand through her shoulder. She snaps awake, fight ready in a second.

“I think I’m waking up,” he says.

“Ah.” A muscle in her jaw jumps. “Well. Don’t let me keep you then.”

They stare at each other for a long moment and then he makes an aborted gesture. “Do you wanna…wake me up? I don’t know how this works, I don’t have a ton of experience with it.”

“If more people in Kirkwall had told me to kill them as a way to end the conversation,” she says, sliding one dagger back in its sheath, “well. Who knows. Maybe I would have enjoyed society parties more.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” he says and she lays the tip of the knife against his chest. “Not even invited murder would have made it easier to get you in a dress.”

She shrugs, mouth quirked, and shoves the blade home.

He wakes to the gray of pre-dawn and rubs his chest.

He doesn’t dream of her again until after they defeat Corypheus.

 

For lack of something better to do, he returns to Kirkwall. His city needs him, even if it feels strange and small without Hawke. The office of Viscount still stands empty and he does not so much enter it as build it again around him. The Hanged Man is a good place to do business — making the nobles traipse through Lowtown so they have to care about crime and infrastructure as it affects poor people is just an added benefit.

He’s been in Kirkwall two months when he dreams again.

The Black City hangs low in the sky, like a malignant moon. He tucks the phrase away in case he has to write a dream sequence, then he scans for her.

Kirkwall by dreams is much like Kirkwall by night — eerie, the walls tipping in towards you, the glossy black stone slick and shiny with what might be blood, in the half light of torches and moons and flickering magic.

Hawke’s back is to him, and her legs dangle off the edge of the wall. In Kirkwall, they’d be above water. Here, there’s nothing but magic below them. His ears roar when he looks down.

He sits beside her and kicks his feet over the drop. “Hawke,” he says, and she glances up at him.

“Spirit. You’re back again.”

“Still just Varric,” he says, so happy to see her, so happy that she’s not already swinging that he doesn’t even try to fight. “What spirit do you think I am? Is there a spirit of writerly magnificence?”

She snorts. “Maybe you are real. You could be Compassion.”

“Aw, Hawke,” he says, tone light as his heart sinks, “you flatter me. I think the Merchant’s Guild would disagree with you. Strongly.”

She laughs. “That’s true. They’d call you Greed. Or Persistence.”

“Persistence,” he repeats. “I like it. That sounds suitably noble and still lets me get away with a lot of shit.”

“As long as you keep at it,” she says archly and he smiles, tries to cover her hand with his. He slides through her and she shivers and pulls her hand into her lap.

“You know, I see you the least. Carver walks with me most days — I can’t decide if it’s Rage, or if that’s just how I remember him. Mother too, though she looks better than we last saw her. Bethany, often. Even Father, sometimes. But you only rarely. Why is that?”

“I’m real,” he tells her again. “I’m dreaming.”

“This again? I thought you’d say something about how hard you are to replicate. That Varric Tethras, truly one of a kind!”

He lets it go. “Well, I _am_. Have you ever met such a stylish dwarf?”

“Wearing your shirt open to your navel isn’t _style_ , it’s showing off,” she says. “You should know the difference by this point in your life.”

“You’re a year older than me,” he reminds her. “And every time we kill a dragon you talk about getting it tattooed.”

“Dragons are stylish!”

“Dragons are _big_ ,” he corrects. “I can see how you might have gotten those things confused.”

“A spirit of quips,” she says. “Humor? Sass? Either way, I don’t approve. How dare you impugn dragons. Fire made flesh.” She sighs happily. He’s never been sure how genuine her love of dragons is, how much a show. She does love her shows.

“You seem better,” he says before he can stop himself.

She glances at him, face taut, and her eyes are _green_. “Yes,” she says, voice queer and tight. “I’ve noticed that as well.”

 

He wakes. He throws up. He signs papers, sending money from here to there,materials from there to here, workers from Lowtown to the Gallows, and on and on it goes. He sends letters to Isabela and through her to Anders. Merrill appears in his room, with no new scars and a smile. He gives her questions, and she disappears again. Aveline bulls in and out every few days, bringing demands for guards, reports of damages, news of illness sweeping Darktown. They drink. He gives her what he can.

Three months pass in a blur of exhaustion, of demands, of being pulled this way and that. He moves to the Viscount’s office. He falls asleep on his desk. He dreams.

He dreams his office, all the nasty things he thinks about it during the day made real. The walls are no wider than his desk. He’s shackled to his seat. A grinning skull that could be Bran opens the door and ushers Hawke in.

She glances around, mouth tight. “It is you, isn’t it? Your dreams are always so vivid. Making up for lost time?”

The shackle clanks open and he nearly falls as he scrambles to get to her, going right over the desk. He tries to grab her hands but slides right through.

Her face is drawn with something he can’t put into words. Pain? Grief? She shakes it off before he can decide. “Well, then,” she says, “why haven’t you gotten me out of here?”

“I’ve been trying,” he admits, sinking back to lean against his desk. If he can’t touch her, he wants to see her. “If you’ve got any ideas, I’d love to hear them.”

Her mouth twists. “No,” she says grudgingly. “Maybe. Something’s changed. The Veil is weakening. The spirits are moving.” She pauses for a moment, then waves a hand through the air. “It’s spooky. Look spooked.”

This is cold of him, but he’d tear down the Veil himself if it meant Hawke back in his world. He can’t even attempt to care about anything but her, not right now. “You believe me?”

“Yes, yes, hurry up, we’re past that now. We’re on to the sudden and concerning shift in the denizens of the Fade. Of which I am one.”

“Have you shifted concerningly?”

She waves a hand and he can see her bones through her skin. “Only as much as you’d expect. I’m still _me_. The spirits stopped following me. And started heading towards a few spots — I think they’re where the Veil is weak. They’re just…clustering.” She shivers exaggeratedly. “Spooky.”

He’s always been most comfortable following where she leads. “Okay,” he says. “What are we doing about it?”

She grins at him, lopsided and delighted. “Well,” she says. “I should think we’ll make trouble.”

 

He wakes up with his head spinning, stuffed full of plans. He writes a few letters — Merrill and Anders and Bethany, at first, then Isabela and Fenris so they don’t feel left out. He gets lunch with Aveline, shoving off the days work on Bran and everyone else in the blast radius.

“You’re smiling,” Aveline says, like an accusation.

“I do love to spread the shit,” he says, leaning back and leveling an extra pleased look at her.

She rolls her eyes. “You’re _happy_ ,” she corrects. “And _you_ sought me out. What scheme are you working on now?”

“Alright,” he says, too eager to hold the news back any longer. “Bear with me. Hawke’s back in business.”

She goes very still. “Is this about your dreams?” He can tell she’s trying for _dismissive_ but she missed the mark. She’s as thirsty for good news as he is.

“Yes,” he admits easily enough. And then he talks.

Aveline leaves half dazed, and with promises to keep an ear out for weird magic shit.

 

He dreams of Hawke more frequently after that. It’s almost like old times, if he pretends he can’t see her bones when she moves too fast. There’s a shared purpose they’ve all missed. Everyone but Anders filters slowly back into the city and then out again, each on their own Hawke-given mission.

Anders writes regularly. Justice has an interesting perspective, even if he is no longer capable of returning to the Fade.

Varric learns more than he ever wanted about the nature of magic and dreaming. They make no real progress. He thinks of Solas often.

And then the Inquisitor calls him to Orlais.

 

Orlais is as terrible as always, but all of the fawning nobility and stinky cheese is worth it when Cadash takes him through the eluvian into the Crossroads.

“Is this the Fade?” he demands and Vivienne sniffs the air delicately.

“No,” she says, letting magic play over her hand, first ice, then lightning, then fire, a considering look on her face. “And yes.” Her face twists. “Sorry, darling, it’s odd.”

No and yes might be good enough. He can hardly concentrate on the qunari plot at all. When they get back to Halamshiral he tips a servant well to bring a message to his friends.

When he sleeps, he dreams.

“So?” Hawke says. “Is the physical world as full of weird magic shit as the Fade is around here?”

“You wouldn’t even believe it,” he says. “Hey, do you think you could knock through to a pocket dimension? I’ve been informed it’s ‘sort of’ the Fade.”

Slowly, she smiles at him. “Yes, I think I might be able to do that.”

 

Every time Cadash tries to drag him along, he waves her off. He doesn’t have time to deal with sabotage and the Qun when he’s sleeping as much as he can and planning with Merrill and Anders the rest of the time. Every time he falls asleep, Hawke is there, and every time she looks more and more hopeful.

It takes a lot of meetings, a lot of talking, a few trips back and forth through the eluvians and then everyone’s in place and Hawke’s found a spot she thinks is weak enough.

Bethany comes. Hawke says, “It’s time.”

The world should stand still. When he tells this story, it will. As it is, Merrill keeps chatting nervously, hands twisting, in front of the eluvian. Bethany clutches her staff in the corner, swaying, wood occasionally screeching on tile. He wishes for Solas, and then there is no time for wishing.

The eluvian wavers and turns black, then green, and then Hawke steps through, skeletal and green around the edges, and with her face set in a triumphant snarl.

“What, no applause?” she says, throwing out her hands. And then, with great sense of dramatic timing, she collapses.

Merrill catches her, the closest to the eluvian, and Varric is there a moment after to help shoulder her weight. It’s less than he expected, even given the sharpness of her cheekbones, the gaunt turn of her wrists.

“Welcome home,” he tells the sooty flutter of her lashes and she manages a tired smile.

She’s not quite out, but she lets them manhandle her into a bed and waits for food and water to be brought over. He takes the time to examine her, hands running up arms, the caps of her shoulders, smoothing down the back of her neck, her cheeks. She leans into his touch, eyes closed.

“Can’t keep your hands off me,” she murmurs and he laughs.

“No,” he agrees. “We’ll have to hold hands for the rest of your life. I’m never letting you get away from me again. You have a bad track record.”

“How dare you,” she says mildly, lacing her fingers with his. “You’ve never once kept me out of trouble.”

Bethany puts down the glass of water and perches beside her, throwing her arms around Hawke and squeezing so hard that Hawke wheezes and drops Varric’s hand to cling to her.

“You _idiot_ , Marian,” he hears Bethany say, her voice thick, and he stands, catches Daisy by the elbow and draws her from the room to give them a moment of privacy.

She paces outside the door, clearly only barely holding back the urge to burst back in there and wrap herself around Hawke and never leave.

“Give ‘em a minute,” he tells her and she rolls her eyes.

“I _am_ , Varric, I _know_.” She bounces on the balls of her feet, then drops into a squat opposite the door. She looks ready to lunge the moment it opens. “Tell me again about your dreams.”

“Again?” he says. “If you wait a few minutes, I’m sure you can ask Hawke.”

She glances at him, mouth curved wryly up at the corner. “Hawke’s got more important things to do. Tell me, Varric.”

He sighs and settles next to her, knocking at her side until she sits. “Well,” he says, “if I must.”

“Go on then.” She nudges him with a sharp elbow. “I won’t ask again.”

“The Hanged Man by dreams is, somehow, even worse than the Hanged Man of life,” he starts. “But worst of all was seeing Hawke in my bed, alive only by habit. She kicked me out of my own dream pretty damn fast, too, though I can’t hold that against her. Poor thing had a lot to deal with. When I woke up, I knew she was alive, and I knew I had to save her. Well,” he huffs a laugh, “if she didn’t save herself first.”

“She is good at that, isn’t she?” Merrill says, bringing her knees up so she can rest her chin on them.

“Better at getting herself _in_ trouble than out of it. I don’t understand how you can dream every night, by the way. It always makes me feel sick. Even just the idea of it —“ He gives an exaggerated shiver. “Hawke was the only thing that could make it bearable. I hope I’m done with it now.”

“Varric!” Merrill says, beaming at him. “That’s _romantic_.”

“What?” he protests. “No it’s not! The Fade just gives me the creeps!”

The door opens before Merrill can press him any further and Bethany sticks her head out. “Come on in,” she says, and her eyes are red but her stance is loose. She hasn’t looked so light since before she went into the Circle.

He waves Merrill in and leans his head back against the wall. He’s gotten more of Hawke’s time in the past year than anyone else, he can wait his turn. Romantic though?

If he thinks about it as a story, he can see it. Best friends, separated by forces beyond their control, reunited by the shattering of all known laws of the world. It _is_ romantic, ridiculously so. If he wrote it, his editor would call it overwrought at her kindest.

“Shit,” he whispers. _How long have you loved her?_ he hears Cole ask again. Forever, it feels like. He can’t remember a time without loving her. It’s so much part of his world that he didn’t even notice, the way breathing is unconscious until it’s pointed out.

Merrill sticks her head out and calls him over _. “Varric_ ,” she says, “she wants you.”

Varric has always come at Hawke’s call. He goes.

 

Hawke looks no better than she did when she first strode out of the eluvian. There’s a flush in her cheeks that wasn’t there before, a wet sheen to her eyes she’d hate to have pointed out. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, just by being alive.

He walks over to her, hearing nothing but his heartbeat. “It’s good to have you back,” he tells her, voice hoarse.

She looks at him for a long, slow moment, biting her lip. Then she slides her hand up his arm, only stopping when her hand hooks around the back of his neck. She pulls him down, gentle enough that he could break her hold with a shrug, eyes wide and searching. He goes, heart pounding, until their lips meet.

The world goes quiet. There is only them, the soft press of their lips, her cool hand on the back of his neck.

He pulls back just as slow and Hawke gazes frankly at him. “It’s good to see you,” she says. “In the flesh.”

“Hawke,” he says, voice cracking. “You’re gonna make me cry.”

She laughs and rolls her eyes, but her hand stays on his nape and her eyes are wet. “You’re a sap, Varric Tethras.”

“Only for you, Marian Hawke,” he murmurs, and kisses her again, gently.


End file.
